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THE 



CAITS.ES 



AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, 



JOHN LATHROP MOTLEY, LL.D., D. C. L., 

It 7 } 7 

AUTHOR OF "niSTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS," " HISTORY OF 
THE DUTCH REPUBLIC." 



NEW YORK : 

D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 443 & 445 BROADWAY. 
1861. 






( 61505 



'05 J 



tf 



CAUSES 



AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. 



The de facto question in America has been referred at last 
to the dread arbitrament of civil war. Time and events must 
determine whether the "great Republic" is to disappear from 
the roll of nations, or whether it is destined to survive the 
storm which has gathered over its head. There is, perhaps, 
a readiness in England to prejudge the case ; a disposition not 
to exult in our downfall, but to accept the fact ; for nations, 
as well as individuals, may often be addressed in the pathetic 
language of the poet, — 

"Donee eris felix, multos numerabis amicos ; 
Tempora cum fuerint nubila, nnllus erit." 

Yet the trial by the ordeal of battle has hardly commenced, 
and it would be presumptuous to affect to penetrate the veil 
of even the immediate future. But the question dejure is a 
different one. The right and the wrong belong to the past, 
are hidden by no veil, and may easily be read by all who are 
not wilfully blind. Yet it is often asked why have the Ameri- 
cans taken up arms ? Why has the United States Govern- 
ment plunged into what is sometimes called " this wicked 
war" ? Especially it is thought amazing in England that the 
President should have recently called for a great army of vol- 
unteers and regulars, and that the inhabitants of the Free 
States should have sprung forward as one man at his call, like 
men suddenly relieved from a spell. It would have been 
amazing had the call been longer delayed. The national flag, 
insulted and defied for many months, had at last been lowered, 
after the most astonishing kind of siege recorded in history, to 
an armed and organized rebellion ; and a prominent personage 
in the Government of the Southern " confederacy " is reported 
to have proclaimed amid the exultations of victory that before 



the 1st of May the same cherished emblem of our nationality 
should be struck from the capitol at Washington. An ad- 
vance of the " Confederate troops" upon that city ; the flight 
or captivity of the President and his Cabinet ; the seizure of 
the national archives, the national title deeds, and the whole 
national machinery of foreign intercourse and internal ad- 
ministration, by the Confederates ; and the Proclamation from 
the American palladium itself of the Montgomery Constitution 
in place of the one devised by Washington, Madison, Hamil- 
ton, and Jay — a constitution in which slavery should be the 
universal law of the land, the cornerstone of the political edi- 
fice — were events which seemed for a few days of intense 
anxiety almost probable. 

Had this really been the result, without a blow struck in 
defence of the national Government and the old Constitution, 
it is certain that the contumely poured forth upon the Free 
States by their domestic enemies, and by the world at large, 
would have been as richly deserved as it would have been 
amply bestowed. At present such a catastrophe seems to 
have been averted. But the levy in mass of such a vast num- 
ber of armed men in the Free States, in swift response to the 
call of the President, shows how deep and pervading is the 
attachment to the Constitution and to the flag of Union in 
the hearts of the 19,000,000 who inhabit those States. It is 
confidently believed, too, that the sentiment is not wholly ex- 
tinguished in the 9,000,000 white men who dwell in the Slave 
States, and that, on the contrary, there exists a large party 
throughout that country who believe that the Union furnishes 
a better protection for life, property, law, civilization, and 
liberty than even the indefinite extension of African slavery 
can do. 

At any rate, the loyalty of the Free States has proved 
more intense and passionate than it had ever been supposed 
to be before. It is recognized throughout their whole people 
that the Constitution of 1787 had made us a nation. The 
efforts of a certain class of politicians for a long period had 
been to reduce our Commonwealth to a Confederacy. So long 
as their efforts had been confined to argument, it was con- 
sidered sufficient to answer the argument ; but, now that 
secession, instead of remaining a topic of vehement and subtle 
discussion, has expanded into armed and fierce rebellion and 
revolution, civil war is the inevitable result. It is the result 
foretold by sagacious statesmen almost a generation ago, in 
the days of the tariff " nullification." " To begin with nulli- 
fication," said Daniel Webster in 1833, " with the avowed 



intention, nevertheless, not to proceed to secession, dismem- 
berment, and general revolution, is as if one were to take the 
plunge of Niagara, and cry out that he would stop half way 
down." And now the plunge of secession has been taken, and 
we are all struggling in the vortex of general revolution. 

The body politic known for 70 years as the United States 
of America is not a Confederacy, not a compact of Sovereign 
States, not a copartnership ; it is a Commonwealth, of which 
the Constitution drawn up at Philadelphia by the Convention 
of 17S7, over which Washington presided, is the organic, 
fundamental law. We had already had enough of a Confed- 
eracy. The thirteen rebel provinces, afterwards the thirteen 
original independent States of America, had been united to 
each other during the revolutionary war by articles of confed- 
eracy. " The said States hereby enter into a firm league 
of friendship vriih each other." Such was the language of 
1781, and the league or treaty thus drawn up was ratified, 
not by the "people of the States, but by the State Governments, 
— the legislative and executive bodies, namely, in their cor- 
porate capacity. 

The continental Congress, which was the central adminis- 
trative Board during this epoch, was a diet of envoys from 
sovereign States. It had no power to act on individuals. It 
could not command the States. It could move only by re- 
quisitions and recommendations. Its functions were essen- 
tially diplomatic, like those of the States-General of the old 
Dutch Kepublic, like those of the modern Germanic Confedera- 
tion. 

We were a league of petty sovereignties. When the war 
had ceased, when our independence had been acknowledged in 
1783, we sank rapidly into a condition of utter impotence, 
imbecility, anarchy. We had achieved our independence, but 
we had not constructed a nation. We were not a body politic. 
No laws could be enforced, no insurrections suppressed, no 
debts collected. Neither property nor life was secure. Great 
Britain had made a treaty of peace with us, but she scornfully 
declined a treaty of commerce and amity ; not because we had 
been rebels, but because we were not a State — because we 
were a mere dissolving league of jarring provinces, incapable 
of guaranteeing the stipulations of any commercial treaty. 
We were unable even to fulfil the conditions of the treaty of 
peace and enforce the stipulated collection of debts due to 
British subjects ; and Great Britain refused in consequence 
to give up the military posts which she held within our fron- 
tiers. For 12 years after the acknowledgment of our independ- 



ence we were mortified by the spectacle of foreign soldiers oc- 
cupying a long chain of fortresses south of the great lakes and 
upon our own soil. We were a confederacy. We were sov- 
ereign States. And these were the fruits of such a confeder- 
acy and of such sovereignty. It was, until the immediate 
present, the darkest hour of our history. But there were pa- 
triotic and sagacious men in those days, and their efforts at 
last rescued us from the condition of a confederacy. The 
" Constitution of the United States " was an organic law, en- 
acted by the sovereign people of that whole territory which is 
commonly called in geographies and histories the United 
States of America. It was empowered to act directly, by its 
own legislative, judicial, and executive machinery, upon every 
individual in the country. It could seize his property, it 
could take his life, for causes of which itself was the judge. 
The States were distinctly prohibited from opposing its decrees 
or from exercising any of the great functions of sovereignty. 
The Union alone was supreme, " any thing in the constitution 
and laws of the States to the contrary notwithstanding." Of 
what significance, then, was the title of "sovereign" States, 
arrogated in later days by communities which had voluntarily 
abdicated the most vital attributes of sovereignty ? But, in- 
deed, the words " sovereign " and " sovereignty " are purely 
inapplicable to the American system. In the Declaration of 
Independence the provinces declare themselves " free and in- 
dependent States," but the men of those days knew that the 
word " sovereign " was a term of feudal origin. When their 
connection with a time-honored feudal monarchy was abruptly 
severed the word " Sovereign " had no meaning for us. A 
sovereign is one who acknowledges no superior, who possesses 
the highest authority without control, who is supreme in pow- 
er. How could any one State of the United States claim 
such characteristics at all, least of all after its inhabitants, in 
their primary assemblies, had voted to submit themselves, 
without limitation of time, to a constitution which was de- 
clared supreme ? The only intelligible source of power in a 
country beginning its history de novo after a revolution, in a 
land never subjected to military or feudal conquest, is the will 
of the people of the whole land as expressed by a majority. 
At the present moment, unless the Southern revolution shall 
prove successful, the United States Government is a fact, an 
established authority. In the period between 1783 and 1787 
we were in chaos. In May of 1787 the Convention met in 
Philadelphia, and, after some months' deliberation, adopted 
with unprecedented unanimity the project of the great law, 



which, so soon as it should be accepted by the people, was to 
be known as the Constitution of the United States. 

It was not a compact. Who ever heard of a compact to 
which there were no parties ? or who ever heard of a compact 
made by a single party with himself? Yet the name of no 
State is mentioned in the whole document ; the States them- 
selves are only mentioned to receive commands or prohibitions, 
and the " people of the United States " is the single party by 
whom alone the instrument is executed. 

The Constitution was not drawn up by the States, it was 
not promulgated in the name of the States, it was not ratified 
by the States. The States never acceded to it, and possess no 
power to secede from it. It " was ordained and established " 
over the States by a power superior to the States — by the peo- 
ple of the whole land in their aggregate capacity, acting through 
conventions of delegates expressly chosen for the purpose within 
each State, independently of the State Governments, after the 
project had been framed. 

There had always been two parties in the country during 
the brief but pregnant period between the abjuration of British 
authority and the adoption of the Constitution of 1787. There 
was a party advocating State rights and local self-government 
in its largest sense, and a party favoring a more consolidated 
and national government. The National or Federal party 
triumphed in the adoption of the new government. It was 
strenuously supported and bitterly opposed on exactly the 
same grounds. Its friends and foes both agreed that it had put 
an end to the system of confederacy. Whether it were an ad- 
vantageous or a noxious change, all agreed that the thing had 
been done. 

"In all our deliberations (says the letter accompanying and recommend- 
ing the Constitution to the people) we kept steadily in view that which ap- 
peared to us the greatest interest of every true American, the consolidation 
of our Union, in which is involved our prosperity, safety, perhaps our na- 
tional existence.' 1 '' — Journal of the Contention, 1 Story, 3C8. 

And an eloquent opponent denounced the project for this 
very same reason — 

"That this is a consolidated Government (said Henry), is demonstrably 
clear. The language is ' we the people,' instead of ' we the State-.' It must 
be one great, consolidated national Government of the people of all tho 

States." 

And the Supreme Court of the United States, after the 
Government had been established, held this language in an 
important case, " Gibbons v. Ogden : " — 

"It has been said that the States were sovereign, were completely inde- 
pendent, and were connected with each other by a league. This is true. 



8 

But when these allied sovereignties converted their league into a Govern- 
ment, when they converted their Congress of Ambassadors into a Legisla- 
ture, empowered to enact laws, the whole character in which the States 
appear underwent a change." 

There was never a disposition in any quarter in the early 
days of onr constitutional history to deny this great fundament- 
al principle of the Republic. 

"In the most elaborate expositions of the Constitution by its friends 
(says Justice Story), its character as a permanent form of government, as a 
fundamental law, as a supreme rule, which no State was at liberty to disre- 
gard, to suspend, or to annul, was constantly admitted and insisted upon." — 
1 Story, 325. 

The fears of its opponents, then, were that the new system 
would lead to a too strong, to an overcentralized Government. 
The fears of its friends were that the central power of theory 
would prove inefficient to cope with the local or State forces, 
in practice. The experience of the last thirty years, and the 
catastrophe of the present year, have shown which class of 
fears were the more reasonable. 

Had the Union thus established in 1787 been a confeder- 
acy, it might have been argued, with more or less plausibility, 
that the States which peaceably acceded to it might at pleas- 
ure peaceably secede from it. It is none the less true that- 
such a proceeding would have stamped the members of the 
convention — Washington, Madison, Jay, Hamilton, and their 
colleagues — with utter incompetence ; for nothing can be his- 
torically more certain than that their object was to extricate 
us from the anarchy to which that principle had brought us. 

" However gross a heresy it may be (says the Federalist, recommending 
the new Constitution) to maintain that a party to a compact has a right to 
revoke that compact, the doctrine has had respectable advocates. Tha pos- 
sibility of such a question shows the necessity of laying the foundation of 
our national government deeper than in the mere sanction of delegated au- 
thority. The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis 
of the consent of the people." 

Certainly, the most venerated expounders of the Constitu- 
tion — Jay, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, Story, Webster — were 
of opinion that the intention of the convention to establish a 
permanent, consolidated Government, a single commonwealth, 
had been completely successful. 

" The great and fundamental defect of the Confederation of 1781 (says 
Chancellor Kent), which led to its eventual overthrow, was that, in imita- 
tion of all former confederacies, it carried the decrees of the Federal Coun- 
cil to the States in their sovereign capacity. The great and incurable de- 
fect of all former Federal Governments, such as the Amphictyonic, Achaean, 
and Lycian Confederacies, and the Germanic, Helvetic, lianseatic, and 
Dutch ILcpublics, is that they were sovereignties over sovereignties. The 



first effort to relieve tlio people of the country from this state of national 
degradation and ruin came from Virginia. The general convention after- 
wards met at Philadelphia in May, 1787. The plan was submitted to a 
convention of delegates chosen by the people at large in each State for 
assent and ratification. Such a measure was liying the foundations of the 
fabric of our national polity where alone they ought to be laid. — on the 
broad consent of the people." — 1 Kent, 225. 

It is true that the consent of the people was given by the 
inhabitants voting in each State ; but in what other conceiv- 
able way could the people of the whole country have voted ? 
" They assembled in the several States," says Story ; " but 
where else could they assemble ? " 

Secession is, in brief, the return to chaos from which we 
emerged three-quarters of a century since. No logical sequence 
can be more perfect. If one State has a right to secede to- 
day, asserting what it calls its sovereignty, another may, and 
probably will, do the same to-morrow, a third on the next day, 
and so on, until there are none left to secede from. Granted 
the premisses that each State may peaceably secede from the 
Union, it follows that a county may peaceably secede from a 
State, and a town from a county, until there is nothing left 
but a horde of individuals all seceding from each other. The 
theory that the people of a whole country in their aggregate 
capacity are supreme, is intelligible ; and it has been a fact, 
also, in America for 70. years. But it is impossible to show, 
if the people of a State be sovereign, that the people of a 
county, or of a village, and the individuals of the village, are 
not equally sovereign, and justified in "resuming their sov- 
ereignty " when their interests or their caprice seems to impel 
them. The process of disintegration brings back the com- 
munity to barbarism, precisely as its converse has built up 
commonwealths — whether empires, kingdoms, or republics — 
out of original barbarism. Established authority, whatever 
the theory of its origin, is a fact. It should never be lightly 
or capriciously overturned. They who venture on the attempt 
should weigh well the responsibility that is upon them. Above 
all, they must expect to be arraigned for their deeds before 
the tribunal of the civilized world and of future ages — a court 
of last appeal, the code of which is based on the Divine prin- 
ciples of right and reason, which are dispassionate and eternal. 
No man, on either side of the Atlantic, with Anglo-Saxon 
blood in his veins, will dispute the right of a people or of any 
portion of a people to rise against oppression, to demand 
redress of grievances, and in case of denial of justice to take 
tip arms to vindicate the sacred principle of liberty. Few 
Englishmen or Americans will deny that the source of govern- 
1* 



10 

ment is the consent of the governed, or that every nation has 
the right to govern itself according to its will. When the 
silent consent is changed to fierce remonstrance, the revolution 
is impending. The right of revolution is indisputable. It is 
written on the whole record of our race. British and Ameri- 
can history is made up of rebellion and revolution. Many of 
the crowned kings were rebels or usurpers ; Hampden, Pym, 
and Oliver Cromwell : Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, all 
were rebels. It is no word of reproach ; but these men all 
knew the work they had set themselves to do. They never 
called their rebellion " peaceable secession." They were sus- 
tained by the consciousness of right when they overthrew es- 
tablished authority, but they meant to overthrow it. They 
meant rebellion, civil war, bloodshed, infinite suffering for 
themselves and their whole generation, for they accounted 
them welcome substitutes for insulted liberty and violated 
right. There can be nothing plainer, then, than the American 
right of revolution. But then it should be called revolution. 
" Secession, as a revolutionary right," said Daniel Webster 
in the Senate, nearly 30 years ago, in words that now sound 
prophetic, — 

" Is intelligible. As a right to be proclaimed iu the midst of civil com- 
motions, and asserted at the head of armies, I can understand it. But as a 
practical right, existing under the Constitution, and in conformity -with its 
provisions, it seems to be nothing but an absurdity, for it supposes resistance 
to Government under authority of Government itself; it supposes dismem- 
berment without violating the principles of Union ; it supposes opposition 
to law without crime ; it supposes the violation of oaths without respon- 
sibility ; it supposes the total overthrow of Government without rev- 
olution." 

The men who had conducted the American people through 
a long and fearful revolution were the founders of the new 
commonwealth which permanently superseded the subverted 
authority of the Crown. They placed the foundations on the 
unbiassed, untrammelled, consent of the people. They were 
sick of leagues, of petty sovereignties, of Governments which 
could not govern a single individual. The framers of the Con- 
stitution, which has now endured three- quarters of a century, 
and under which the nation has made a material and intellec- 
tual progress never surpassed in history, were not such triflers 
as to be ignorant of the consequences of their own acts. The 
Constitution which they offered, and which, the people adopted 
as its own, talked not of Sovereign States — spoke not the 
word confederacy. In the very preamble to the instrument 
are inserted the vital words which show its character, " We, 
the people of the United States, to ensure a more perfect union, 



II 

and to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our pos- 
terity, do ordain and establish (his Constitution." Sic volo, 
sicjubeo. It is the language of a Sovereign solemnly speak- 
ing to the world. It is the promulgation of a great law, the 
norma agendi of a new commonwealth. It is no compact. 

"A compact (says Blackstone) is a promise proceeding from us. Law 
is a command directed to us. The language of a compact is, \\<j will or 
will not do this ; that of a law is, Thou shalt or shalt not do it." (1 I). 38 
44, 45.) 

And this is throughout the language of the Constitution. 
Congress shall do this ; the President shall do that ; the 
States shall not exercise this or that power. Witness, for ex- 
ample, the important clauses by which the " Sovereign " 
States are shorn of all the great attributes of sovereignty — no 
State shall coin money, nor emit bills of credit, nor pass ex 
post facto laws, nor laws impairing the obligations of contracts, 
nor maintain armies and navies, nor grant letters of marque, 
nor make compacts with other States, nor hold intercourse 
with foreign Powers, nor grant titles of nobility ; and that 
most significant phrase, " this Constitution, and the laws 
made in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme law of the 
land." 

Could language be more Imperial ? Could the claim to 
State " sovereignty " be more completely disposed of at a 
word ? How can that be sovereign, acknowledging no supe- 
rior, supreme, which has voluntarily accepted a supreme law 
from something which it acknowledges as superior ? 

The Constitution is perpetual, not provisional or tempo- 
rary. It is made for all time — " for ourselves and our pos- 
terity." It is absolute within its sphere. " This Constitution 
shall be the supreme law of the land, any thing in the Consti- 
tution or laws of a State to the contrary notwithstanding." 
Of what value, then, is a law of a State declaring its connection 
with the Union dissolved ? The Constitution remains su- 
preme, and is bound to assert its supremacy till overpowered 
by force. The use of force — of armies and navies of whatever 
strength — in order to compel obedience to the civil and con- 
stitutional authority, is not " wicked war," is not civil war, it? 
not war at all. So long as it exists the Government is obliged 
to put forth its strength when assailed. The President, who 
has taken an oath before God and man to maintain the Con- 
stitution and laws, is perjured if he yields the Constitution and 
laws to armed rebellion without a struggle. He knows nothing 
of States. Within the sphere of the United States Govern- 
ment he deals with individuals only, citizens of the great 



12 

Republic, in whatever portion of it they may happen to live. 
He has no choice but to enforce the laws of the Republic 
wherever they may be resisted. When he is overpowered the 
Government ceases to exist. The Union is gone, and Massa- 
chusetts, Rhode Island, and Ohio are as much separated from 
each other as they are from Georgia or Louisiana. Anarchy 
has returned upon us. The dismemberment of the Common- 
wealth is complete. We are again in the chaos of 1785. 

But it is sometimes ashed why the Constitution did not 
make a special provision against the right of secession. How 
could it do so ? The people created a Constitution over the 
whole land, with certain denned, accurately enumerated powers, 
and among these were all the chief attributes of sovereignty. 
It was forbidden to a State to coin money, to keep armies and 
navies, to make compacts with other States, to hold inter- 
course with foreign nations, to oppose the authority of Gov- 
ernment. To do any one of these things is to secede, for it 
would be physically impossible to do any one of them without 
secession. It would have been puerile for the Constitution to 
say formally to each State, " Thou shalt not secede." The 
Constitution, being the supreme law, being perpetual, and 
having expressly forbidden to the States those acts without 
which secession is an impossibility, would have been wanting 
in dignity had it used such superfluous phraseology. This 
Constitution is supreme, ivhatever laws a State may enact, 
says the organic law. Was it necessary to add, ' ' and no State 
shall enact a law of secession " ? To add to a great statute, 
in which the sovereign authority of the land declares its will, 
a phrase such as " and be it further enacted that the said law 
shall not be violated," would scarcely seem to strengthen the 
statute. 

It was accordingly enacted that new States might be ad- 
mitted ; but no permission was given for a State to secede. 

Provisions were made for the amendment of the Consti- 
tution from time to time, and it was intended that those pro- 
visions should be stringent. A two-thirds vote in both Houses of 
Congress, and a ratification in three-quarters of the whole num- 
ber of States, are conditions only to be complied with in grave 
emergencies. But the Constitution made no provision for its 
own dissolution, and, if it had done so, it would have been a 
proceeding quite without example in history. A Constitution 
can only be subverted by revolution, or by foreign conquest of 
the land. The revolution may be the result of a successful 
rebellion. A peaceful revolution is also conceivable in the case 
of the United States. The same power which established the 



13 

Constitution, may justly destroy it. The people of the whole 
land may meet, by delegates, in a great national convention, 
as they did in 1787, and declare that the Constitution no 
longer answers the purpose for which it was ordained ; that 
it no longer can secure the blessings of liberty for the people 
in present and future generations, and that it is therefore for 
ever abolished. When that project has been submitted again 
to the people voting in their primary assemblies, not influenced 
by fraud or force, the revolution is lawfully accomplished, and 
the Union is no more. 

Such a proceeding is conceivable, although attended with 
innumerable difficulties and dangers. But these are not so 
great as those of the civil war into which the action of the 
seceding States has plunged the country. The division of the 
national domain and - other property, the navigation and police 
of the great rivers, the arrangement and fortification of fron- 
tiers, the transit of the Isthmus, the mouth of the Mississippi, the 
control of the Gulf of Mexico, these are significant phrases which 
have an appalling sound ; for there is not one of them that does 
not contain the seeds of war. In any separation, however accom- 
plished, these difficulties must be dealt with, but there would 
seem less hope of arriving at a peaceful settlement of them 
now that the action of the seceding States has been so precipi- 
tate and lawless. For a single State, one after another, to 
resume those functions of sovereignty which it had uncondi- 
tionally abdicated when its people ratified the Constitution of 
1787, to seize forts, arsenals, custom-houses, post-offices, 
mints, and other valuable property of the Union, paid for by 
the treasure of the Union, was not the exercise of a legal func- 
tion, but it was rebellion, treason, and plunder. 

It is strange that Englishmen should find difficulty in 
understanding that the United States' Government is a nation 
among the nations of the earth ; a constituted authority, which 
may be overthrown by violence, as may be the fate of any 
state whether kingdom or republic, but which is false to the 
people if it does not its best to preserve them from the horrors 
of anarchy, even at the cost of blood. The " United States " 
happens to be a plural title, but the commonwealth thus de- 
signated is a unit, — " c 'pluribus unum." The Union alone is 
clothed with imperial attributes ; the Union alone is known 
and recognized in the family of nations ; the Union alone holds 
the purse and the sword, regulates foreign intercourse, imposes 
taxes on foreign commerce, makes Avar and concludes peace. 
The armies, the navies, the militia, belong to the Union alone, 
and the President is Commander-in-Chief of all. No State can 



• 14 

keep troops or fleets. What man in the civilized world has not 
heard of the United States ? What man in England can tell 
the names of all the individual States ? And yet, with hardly 
a superficial examination of our history and our constitution, 
men talk glibly about a confederacy, a compact, a copartner- 
ship, and the right of a State to secede at pleasure, not know- 
ing that by admitting such loose phraseology and such imagin- 
ary rights, we should violate the first principles of our political 
organization, should fly in the face of our history, should 
trample under foot the teachings of Jay, Hamilton, Washing- 
ton, Marshall, Madison, Dane, Kent, Story and Webster, and, 
accepting only the dogmas of Mr. Calhoun as infallible, sur- 
render forever our national laws and our national existence. 

Englishmen themselves live in a united empire ; but if the 
kingdom of Scotland should secede, should seize all the na- 
tional property, forts, arsenals, and public treasure on its soil, 
organize an army, send forth foreign Ministers to Louis Napo- 
leon, the Emperor of Austria, and other Powers, issue invita- 
tions to all the pirates of the world to prey upon English 
commerce, screening their piracy from punishment by the 
banner of Scotland, and should announce its intention of plant- 
ing that flag upon Buckingham Palace, it is probable that a 
blow or two would be struck to defend the national honor and 
the national existence, without fear that the civil war would 
be denounced as wicked and fratricidal. Yet it would be diffi- 
cult to show that the State of Florida, for example, a Spanish 
province, purchased for national purposes some forty years ago 
by the United States Government for several millions, and 
fortified and furnished with navy yards for national uses, at a 
national expense of many more millions, and numbering at 
this moment a population of only 80,000 white men, should 
be more entitled to resume its original sovereignty than the 
ancient kingdom of William the Lion and Robert Bruce. 

The terms of the treaty between England and Scotland 
were perpetual, and so is the constitution of the United States. 
The United Empire may be destroyed by revolution and war, 
and so may the United States ; but a peaceful and legal dis- 
memberment without the consent of a majority of the whole 
people, is an impossibility. 

But it is sometimes said that the American Republic 
originated in secession from the mother country, and that it is 
unreasonable of the Union to resist the seceding movement on 
the part of the new confederacy. But it so happens that the 
one case suggests the other only by the association of contrast. 
The thirteen colonies did not intend to secede from the British 



15 

empire. They were forced into secession by a course of policy 
on the part of the mother country such as no English admin- 
istration at the present day can be imagined capable of adopt- 
ing. Those Englishmen in America were loyal to the Crown ; 
but they exercised the right which cis-Atlantic or transat- 
lantic Englishmen have always exercised, of resistance to 
arbitrary government. Taxed without being represented, and 
insulted by measures taken to enforce the odious, but not 
exorbitant imposts, they did not secede, nor declare their in- 
dependence. On the contrary, they made every effort to avert 
such a conclusion. In the words of the " forest-born Demos- 
thenes " — as Lord Byron called the great Virginian, Patrick 
Hemy — the Americans 

" petitioned, remonstrated, cast themselves at the foot of the throne, and 
implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the Ministers and 
Parliament. Bnt their petitions were slighted, their remonstrances pro- 
cured only additional violence and insult, and they were spurned with 
contempt from the foot of the throne." 

The " Boston massacre," the Boston port-bill, the Boston 
" tea party," the battle of Lexington, the battle of Bunker' s- 
hill were events which long preceded the famous Declaration 
of Independence. It was not till the colonists felt that re- 
dress for grievances was impossible that they took the irrev- 
ocable step, and renounced their allegiance to the crown. 
The revolution had come at last, they had been forced into it, 
but they knew that it was revolution, and that they were acting 
at the peril of their lives. " We must be unanimous in this 
business," said Hancock ; " we must all hang together." 
"Yes," replied Franklin, "or else we shall all hang sepa- 
rately." 

The risk incurred by the colonists was enormous, but the 
injury to the mother country was comparatively slight. They 
went out into darkness and danger themselves, but the British 
empire was not thrown into anarchy and chaos by their seces- 
sion. 

Thus their course was the reverse of that adopted by the 
South. The prompt secession of seven States because of the 
constitutional election of a President over the candidates voted 
for by their people, was the redress in advance of grievances 
which they may, reasonably or unreasonably, have expected, 
but which had not yet occurred. There is the high authority 
of the Vice-President of the Southern " Confederacy," who de- 
clared a week after the election of Mr. Lincoln that the elec- 
tion was not a cause for secession, and that there was no cer- 
tainty, that he would have either the power or the inclination 



16 

to invade the constitutional rights of the South. In the Free 
States it was held that the resolutions of the convention by 
which Mr. Lincoln was nominated were scrupulously and con- 
scientiously framed to protect all those constitutional rights. 
The question of slavery in the Territories, of the future exten- 
sion of slavery, was one which had always been an open ques- 
tion, and on which issue was now joined. But it was no ques- 
tion at all that slavery within a State was sacred from all 
interference by the general Government, or by the free States, 
or by individuals in those States ; and the Chicago Conven- 
tion strenuously asserted that doctrine. 

The question of free trade, which is thrust before the Eng- 
lish public by many journals, had no immediate connection 
with the Secession, although doubtless the desire of direct 
trade with Europe has long been a prominent motive at the 
South. The Gulf States seceded under the moderate tariff of 
1857, for which South Carolina voted side by side with Massa- 
chusetts. The latter State, although for political, not econom- 
ical, reasons it thought itself obliged since the secession to 
sustain the Pennsylvania interest by voting for the absurd 
Morrill Bill, is not in favor of protection. On the contrary, 
the great manufactories on the Merrimac river have long been 
independent of protection, and export many million dollars' 
worth of cotton and other fabrics to foreign countries, under- 
selling or competing with all the world in open market. It 
would be impossible for any European nation to drive the 
American manufacturer from the markets of the American con- 
tinent in the principal articles of cheap clothing for the?nasses, 
tariff or no tariff. This is a statistical fact which cannot be 
impugned. 

The secession of the colonies, after years of oppression and 
grievances for which redress had been sought in vain, left the 
British empire, 3,000 miles off, in security, with Constitution 
and laws unimpaired, even if its colonial territory were 
seriously diminished. The secession of the Southern States, 
in contempt of any other remedy for expected grievances, is 
followed by the destruction, of the whole body politic of which 
they were vital parts. 

Not only is the United Bepublic destroyed if the revolution 
prove successful ; but, even if the people of the Free States 
have the enthusiasm and sagacity to reconstruct their Union, 
and by a new national convention to re-ordain and re-establish 
the time-honored Constitution, still an immense territory is 
lost. But the extent of that territory is not the principal cle- 
ment in the disaster. The world is wide enou";h for all. It 



17 

is the loss of the southern marine frontier which is fatal to the 
Republic. Florida and the vast Louisiana territory purchased 
by the Union from foreign countries, and garnished with for- 
tresses at the expense of the Union, are fallen with all these 
improvements into the hands of a foreign and unfriendly Power. 
Should the dire misfortune of a war with a great maritime na- 
tion, with England or France for example, befall the Union 
its territory, hitherto almost impregnable, might now be open 
to fleets and armies acting in alliance with a hostile " Confed- 
eracy " which has become possessed of an important part of 
the Union's maritime line of defence. Moreover, the Union 
has 12,000 ships, numbering more than 5,000,000 tons, the 
far greater part of which belongs to the Free States, and the 
vast commerce of the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico re- 
quires and must receive protection at every hazard. 

Is it strange that the Union should make a vigorous, just, 
and lawful effort to save itself from the chaos from which the 
Constitution of 1787 rescued the country ? Who that has 
read and pondered the history of that dark period does not 
shudder at the prospect of its return ? 

But yesterday we were a State — the Great Kepublic — 
prosperous and powerful, with a flag known and honored all 
over the world. Seventy years ago we were a helpless league 
of bankrupt and lawless petty sovereignties. We had a cur- 
rency so degraded that a leg of mutton was cheap at $1,000. 
The national debt, incurred in the War of Independence, had 
hardly a nominal value, and was considered worthless. The 
absence of law, order, and security for life and property was as 
absolute as could be well conceived in a civilized land. Debts 
could not be collected, courts could enforce no decrees, insur- 
rections could not be suppressed. The army of the Confed- 
eracy numbered eighty men. From this condition the consti- 
tution rescued us. 

That great law, reported by the general Convention of 
1787, was ratified by the people of all the land voting in each 
State for a ratifying Convention chosen expressly for that pur- 
pose. It was promulgated in the name of the people : — " We, 
the people of the United States, in order to form a more per- 
fect Union, and to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves 
and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution." 
It was ratified by the people — not b/j the States acting through 
their governments, legislative and executive, but by the people 
electing especial delegates within each State ; and it is im- 
portant to remember that in none of these ratifying Conven- 
tions was any reserve made of a State's right to repeal the 
Union, or to secede. 



18 

Many criticisms were offered in the various ratifying ordi- 
nances, many amendments suggested, but the acceptance of 
the Constitution, the submission to the perpetual law, was in 
all cases absolute. The language of Virginia was most explicit 
on this point. " The powers granted under the Constitution, 
being derived from the people of the United States, may be 
resumed by them whenever the same shall be perverted to their 
injury or oppression." That the people of the United States, 
expressing their will solemnly in national Convention, are com- 
petent to undo the work of their ancestors, and are fully justi- 
fied in so doing when the Constitution shall be perverted to 
their injury and oppression, there is no man in the land that 
doubts. This course has been already indicated as the only 
peaceful revolution possible ; but such a proceeding is very 
different from the secession ordinance of a single State resum- 
ing its sovereignty of its own free will, and without consulta- 
tion with the rest of the inhabitants of the country. 

"There was no reservation (says Justice Story) of any right on the part 
of any State to dissolve its connection, or to abrogate its dissent, or to sus- 
pend the operation of the Constitution as to itself." 

And thus, when the ratifications had been made, a new 
Commonwealth took its place among the nations of the earth. 
The effects of the new Constitution were almost magical. Or- 
der sprang out of chaos. Law resumed its reign ; debts were 
collected ; life and property became secure ; the national debt 
was funded and ultimately paid, principal and interest, to the 
uttermost farthing ; the articles of the treaty of peace in 1783 
were fulfilled, and Great Britain, having an organized and 
united State to deal with, entered into a treaty of commerce 
and amity with us — the first and the best ever negotiated be- 
tween the two nations. Not the least noble of its articles 
(the 21st) provided that the acceptance by the citizens or sub- 
jects of either country of foreign letters of marque should be 
treated and punished as piracy. Unfortunately, that article 
and several others were limited to 12 years, and were not sub- 
sequently renewed. The debts due to British subjects were 
collected, and the British Government at last surrendered the 
forts on our soil. 

At last we were a nation, with a flag respected abroad and 
almost idolized at home as the symbol of union and coming 
greatness ; and we entered upon a career of prosperity and 
progress never surpassed in history. The autonomy of each 
State, according to which its domestic and interior affairs 
are subject to the domestic Legislature and executive, was 
secured by the reservation to each State of powers not ex- 



19 

pressly granted to the Union by the Constitution. Supreme 
within its own orbit, which is traced from the same centre of 
popular power whence the wider circumference of the general 
government is described, the individual State is surrounded on 
all sides by that all-embracing circle. The reserved and unnam- 
ed powers arc many and important, but the State is closely 
circumscribed. Thus, a State is forbidden to alter its form of 
government. " Thou shalt forever remain a republic," says the 
United States' Constitution to each individual State. A State 
is forbidden, above all, to pass any law conflicting with the 
United States' Constitution or laws. Moreover, every member 
of Congress, every member of a State Legislature, every execu- 
tive or judicial officer in the service of the Union or of a sepa- 
rate State, is bound by solemn oath to maintain the United 
States' Constitution. This alone would seem to settle the 
question of Secession ordinances. So long as the Constitution 
endures, such an ordinance is merely the act of conspiring and 
combining individuals, with whom the general government 
may deal. When it falls in the struggle, and becomes power- 
less to cope with them, the Constitution has been destroyed by 
violence. Peaceful acquiescence in such combinations is per- 
jury and treason on the part of the chief magistrate of the 
country, for which he may be impeached and executed. Yet 
men speak of Mr. Lincoln as having plunged into wicked war. 
They censure him for not negotiating with envoys who came, not 
to settle grievances, but to demand recognition of the dismem- 
berment of the Kcpublic which he has just sworn to maintain. 
It is true that the ordinary daily and petty affairs of men 
come more immediately than larger matters under the cog- 
nizance of the State governments, tending thus to foster local 
patriotism and local allegiance. At the same time, as all 
controversies between citizens of different States come within 
the sphere of the Federal Courts, and as the manifold and 
conflicting currents of so rapid a national life as the American 
can rarely be confined within narrow geographical boundaries, 
it follows that the Federal Courts, even for domestic purposes 
as well as foreign, are parts of the daily, visible functions of 
the body politic. The Union is omnipresent. The Custom- 
house, the Court-house, the arsenal, the village post-office, the 
muskets of the militia, make the authority of the general 
government a constant fact. Moreover, the restless, migra- 
tory character of the population, which rarely permits all the 
members of one family to remain denizens of any one State, 
has interlaced the States with each other and all with the 
Union to such an extent that a painless excision of a portion 



20 

of the whole nation is an impossibility. To cut away the 
pound of flesh and draw no drop of blood surpasses human in- 
genuity. 

Neither the opponents nor friends of the new government 
in the first generation after its establishment held the doctrine 
of secession. The States' Right party and the Federal party 
disliked or cherished the government because of the general 
conviction that it was a constituted and centralized authority, 
permanent and indivisible, like that of any other organized 
nation. Each party continued to favor or to oppose a strict 
construction of the instrument ; but the doctrine of nullifica- 
tion and secession was a plant of later growth. It was an ac- 
cepted fact that the United States was not a confederacy. 
That word was never used in the Constitution except once by 
ivay of prohibition. We were a nation, not a copartnership, 
except indeed in the larger sense in which every nation may 
be considered a copartnership' — a copartnership of the present 
with the past and with the future. To borrow the lofty lan- 
guage of Burke : — 

" A State ought not to he considered as nothing better than a partnership 
agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico, or tobacco, or some other 
such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be 
dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked upon with other 
reverence, because it is not a partnership in tilings subservient only to gross 
animal existence, of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership 
in all science, a partnership in all art, a partnership in every virtue and in 
all perfection, a partnership not only between those who are living, but 
between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to 
be born." 

And the simple phrase of the preamble to our Constitution 
is almost as pregnant : — " To secure the blessings of liberty 
to us and our posterity." 

But as the innumerable woes of disunion out of which we 
had been rescued by the Constitution began to fade into the 
past, the allegiance to the Union, in certain regions of the 
country, seecmed rapidly to diminish. It was reserved to the 
subtle genius of Mr. Calhoun, one of the most logical, brilliant, 
and persuasive orators that ever lived, to embody once more 
in a set of sounding sophisms the main arguments which had 
been unsuccessfully used in a former generation to prevent the 
adoption of the Constitution, and to exhibit them now as 
legitimate deductions from the Constitution. The memorable 
tariff controversy was the occasion in which the argument of 
State sovereignty was put forth in all its strength. In regard 
to the dispute itself there can be no doubt that the South was 
in the right and the North in the wrong. The production by 



21 

an exaggerated tariff of a revenue so much over and above the 
wants of Government, that it was at last divided among the 
separate States, and foolishly squandered, was the most tri- 
umphant reductio ad absurdam that the South could have 
desired. But it is none the less true that the nullification by 
a State Legislature of a Federal law was a greater injury to 
the whole nation than a foolish tariff, long since repealed, had 
inflicted. It was a stab to the Union in its vital part. The 
blow was partially parried, but it may be doubted whether the 
wound has ever healed. 

Tariffs, the protective system, free trade, — although the 
merits of these questions must be considered as settled by 
sound thinkers in all civilized lauds, must nevertheless still 
remain in some countries the subjects of honest argument and 
legitimate controversy. When all parts of a country are 
represented — and especially in the case of the United States, 
where the Southern portion has three-fifths of a certain kind 
of " property " represented, while the North has no property 
represented — reason should contend with error for victory, 
trusting to its innate strength. And until after the secession 
of the Gulf States the moderate tariff of 1857 was in opera- 
tion, with no probability of its repeal. Moreover, the advo- 
cates of the enlightened system of free trade should reflect that 
should the fourteen Slave States become permanently united 
in a separate confederacy, the state of their internal affairs will 
soon show a remarkable revolution. The absence of the 
Fugitive law will necessarily drive all the slaves from what are 
called the Border States ; and he must be a shallow politician 
who dreams here in England that free trade with all the world, 
and direct taxation for revenue, will be the policy of the new 
and expensive military empire which will arise. Manufactures 
of cotton and woollen will spring up on every river and moun- 
tain stream in the Northern Slave States, the vast mineral 
wealth of their territories will require development, and the 
cry for protection to native industry in one quarter will be as 
surely heeded as will be that other cry from the Gulf of Mexico, 
now partially suppressed for obvious reasons, for the African 
slave trade. To establish a great Gulf empire, including 
Mexico, Central America, Cuba and other islands, with un- 
limited cotton fields and unlimited negroes, this is the golden 
vision in pursuit of which the great Republic has been sacri- 
ficed, the beneficent Constitution subverted. And already the 
vision has fled, but the work of destruction remains.. 

The mischief caused by a tariff, however selfish or however 
absurd, may be temporary. In the last nineteen years there 



22 

have been four separate tariffs passed by the American Con- 
gress, and nothing is more probable than that the suicidal 
Morrill tariff will receive essential modifications even in the 
special session of July ; but the woes caused by secession and 
civil war are infinite ; and whatever be the result of the con- 
test, this generation is not likely to forget the injuries already 
inflicted. 

The great Secession, therefore, of 1860-1, is a rebellion, 
like any other insurrection against established authority, and 
has been followed by civil war, as its immediate and inevitable 
consequence. If successful, it is revolution ; and whether suc- 
cessful or not, it will be judged before the tribunal of mankind 
and posterity according to the eternal laws of reason and 
justice. 

Time and history will decide whether it was a good and 
sagacious deed to destroy a fabric of so long duration, because 
of the election of Mr. Lincoln ; whether it were wise and noble 
to substitute over a large portion of the American soil a Con- 
federacy of which slavery, in the words of its Vice-President, 
is the corner-stone, for the old Kepublic, of which Washing- 
ton, with his own hand, laid the corner-stone. 

It is conceded by the North that it has received from the 
Union innumerable blessings. But it would seem that the 
Union had also conferred benefits on the South. It has car- 
ried its mails at a large expense. It has recaptured its fugitive 
slaves. It has purchased vast tracts of foreign territory, out 
of which a whole tier of Slave States has been constructed. 
It has annexed Texas. It has made war with Mexico. It 
has made an offer — not likely to be repeated, however — to pur- 
chase Cuba, with its multitude of slaves, at a price, according 
to report, as large as the sum paid by England for the emanci- 
pation of her slaves. Individuals in the Free States have ex- 
pressed themselves freely on slavery, as upon every topic of 
human thought, and this must ever be the case where there is 
freedom of the press and of speech. The number of professed 
abolitionists has hitherto been very small, while the great body 
of the two principal political parties in the Free States have 
been strongly opposed to them. The [Republican party was 
determined to set bounds to the extension of slavery, while 
the Democratic party favored that system, but neither had 
designs, secret or avowed, against slavery within the States. 
They knew that the question could only be legally and ration- 
ally dealt with by the States themselves. But both the par- 
ties, as present events are so signally demonstrating, were im- 
bued with a passionate attachment to the Constitution — to 



23 

the established authority of Government, by which alone our 
laws and our liberty are secured. All parties in the Free 
States are now united as one man, inspired by a noble and 
generous emotion to vindicate the sullied honor of their flag, 
arid to save their country from the abyss of perdition into 
which it seemed descending. 

Of the ultimate result we have no intention of speaking. 
Only the presumptuous will venture to lift the veil and affect 
to read with accuracy coming events, the most momentous 
perhaps of our times. One result is, however, secured. The 
Montgomery Constitution, with slavery for its corner-stone, is 
not likely to be accepted, as but lately seemed possible, not 
only by all the Slave States, but even by the Border Free States ; 
nor to be proclaimed from Washington as the new national 
law, in the name of the United States. Compromises will no 
longer be offered by peace conventions, in which slavery is to 
be made national, negroes declared property over all the land, 
and slavery extended over all Territories now possessed or 
hereafter to be acquired. Nor is the United States Govern- 
ment yet driven from Washington. 

Events are rapidly unrolling themselves, and it will be 
proved, in course of time, whether the North will remain 
united in its inflexible purpose, whether the South is as 
firmly united, or whether a counter revolution will be effected 
in either section, which must necessarily give the victory to 
its opponents. We know nothing of the schemes or plans of 
either Government. 

The original design of the Republican party was to put an 
end to the perpetual policy of slavery extension, and acquisi- 
tion of foreign territory for that purpose, and at the same 
time to maintain the Constitution and the integrity of the 
Republic. This at the South seemed an outrage which justi- 
fied civil war ; for events have amply proved what sagacious 
statesmen prophesied thirty years ago — that secession is civil 
war. 

If all is to end in negotiation and separation, notwith- 
standing the almost interminable disputes concerning frontiers, 
the strongholds in the Gulf, and the unshackled navigation of 
the great rivers throughout their whole length, which, it is 
probable, will never be abandoned by the North, except as the 
result of total defeat in the field, it is at any rate certain that 
both parties will negotiate more equitably with arms in then- 
hands than if the unarmed of either section were to deal with 
the armed. If it comes to permanent separation, too, it is 
certain that in the Commonwealth which will still glory in the 



24 

name of the United States, and whose people will doubtless 
re-establish the old Constitution, with some important amend- 
ments, the word secession will be a sound of woe not to be 
lightly uttered. It will have been proved to designate, not a 
peaceful and natural function of political life, but to be only 
another expression for revolution, bloodshed, and all the hor- 
rors of civil war. 

It is probable that a long course of years will be run, and 
many inconveniences and grievances endured, before any one 
of the Free States secedes from the reconstructed Union. 

J. L. M. 



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